Lyin’ Ted gets a Trumpian makeover
“I call him Lyin’ Ted”; “Donald cannot tell the truth”; “I think he’s crazy”; “the man is utterly amoral”; “a pathological liar”; “a narcissist”; “Donald, you’re a snivelling coward and leave Heidi the hell alone”. These are just some of the hot-blooded insults and exchanges that passed between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, the runner-up for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination and current Texas Senator who is seeking re-election in this month’s midterms.
The rivalry between these two men transcended the political and plunged into deep personal animosity, with the current President insulting Senator Cruz’s wife, endless mutual accusations of dishonesty, and Ted Cruz joking on live TV that if his car rolled out of his garage and Donald Trump was walking behind him, he’d have to think twice before deciding to stop. It remains one of the nastiest and most visceral leadership rivalries of modern political history on either side of the Atlantic.
The two men, other than their conservative credentials, could not be more different in background, tone or style. One the son of a billionaire New York real estate magnate, a twice-divorced alpha male of poor reading and limited vocabulary; the other, a self-made lawyer of humble background and razor-sharp intellect, a champion debater who regularly appeared as an attorney before the Supreme Court.
While Trump made his political name with bullish rhetoric, ad hominem name-calling and good old-fashioned demagoguery, Cruz was famed for engaging with his opponents one-to-one in the street in the most dignified manner, refusing to lose his temper and giving multiple minutes of direct dialogue on policy with protesters in Indiana and farmers in Iowa. His ability to turn around a hostile member of the public with calm reasoning is a sight to behold.
Yesterday saw a different story as President Trump flew to a rally for Ted Cruz’s senatorial race in Houston, Texas, as early voting commenced. As expected he lent bombastic, Make-America-Great-Again gusto to the re-election campaign of his old nemesis, who beat Trump in the primaries in the Lone Star State. When quizzed by reporters on the jarring rapprochement, Trump simply declared: “He isn’t Lyin’ Ted anymore, he’s beautiful Ted! I call him Texas Ted!”. The incongruity of the two GOP giants’ newfound rapport with their old animosity was driven home yet more forcefully when Cruz, addressing the assembled crowd of tens of thousands in Houston’s Toyota Centre, opened his rally by bellowing: “God bless President Trump!”
Critics have taken a dim view of Cruz’s U-turn, with some accusing him of cynicism while others have written off the Texan’s embrace of Trump as a personal humiliation. It seems hard to believe that less than two years ago Cruz confronted a hostile Trump supporter by insisting that “we are a nation that is better than anger and insults and cursing and rage”, and tried at every opportunity to distance himself from The Donald’s erratic and bullying character, placing himself instead as the representative of civilized and principled conservatism.
Just as striking as the coming together of these two old enemies is the change in Cruz’s own style. Now deploying Trumpian shorter sentences, threefold repetitions, direct and boo-garnering lacerations of his Democratic opponent, Beto O’Rourke, Cruz struck a more belligerent tone. Trumpeting the President’s achievements, slamming the immigration button with rallying indictments of sanctuary cities, barking “We need to build the wall!” to thunderous applause, and deploying tribal culture wars rhetoric over NFL’s national anthem controversy, Cruz sounded more like the famous drill sergeant in Full Metal Jacket than the bookish, scholarly attorney and constitutionalist he really is.
The Senator is clearly learning from the President’s playbook – if anything, his crowd-baiting and jingoistic performance made Trump’s more jocular manner look comparatively cheery. Cruz is a sharp operator and he will have sensed which direction the wind of political discourse is going – he tried the measured, factual, policy-focused approach and it didn’t pay off. He’s not so naïve as to try the same failed strategy twice.
With Trump’s unabashed embrace of the word “nationalist” to describe himself during his part of the rally the overall tone was tub-thumping in the extreme. Americans seem to have different standards when it comes to the feel of their political culture in this regard; misty-eyed patriotism (“Our hearts bleed red, white and blue!” cried Trump) doesn’t strike as embarrassing, candidates are announced and arrive to sentimental pop music like rock stars (Theresa May’s Dancing Queen doesn’t come close), and crowds bay, whoop and cheer in the way we in Britain would expect to see at a festival or concert, but not a political rally.
The shift towards a nationalist aesthetic may alarm some, but it must be contextualised within a proper understanding of the American democratic tradition. Gushing emotion about the nation is a part of daily life in the USA in a way that is simply not the case in Britain, and public perceptions of what is embarrassing or kitsch are just not the same. Americans regard themselves as heirs of a unique and precious democratic heritage, with many US citizens the descendants of immigrants from countries where oppression was the norm and the rights and freedoms available in America could never even be dreamed of. American exceptionalism is not a fringe theory for right-wing crooks on the other side of the Atlantic; rather, it is a default position, taught in schools and families, and felt in the rhythms and processes of everyday life.
There does indeed seem to be something shifting in America. The society is as divided as it has ever been since the Civil War, and Donald Trump is not a normal incumbent for the office he holds, nor are the circumstances and political culture that created him normal. But Britons should not rush to presume that MAGA hats and Trump banners necessarily herald a far-Right revolution, even with the Texas Senator’s more aggressive approach. Ted Cruz has been opportunistic in his cosying to Trump, but he is a politician who wants to keep his job, and Texan crowds love showbizz. We should keep an eye on the American republic, but Cruz’s change of tone may be no more than tactics and showmanship